1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to digital data formatting and communication, and more specifically to the format and communication of digital video, audio, animation and other digital information.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
The exchange of data between a data storage device, such as a disk drive, and a host, such as a computer or CPU, requires large amounts of data to be communicated back and forth. As the amount of data transferred between components of a system increases, the need to transmit more data at once (wider path) or to increase the speed of the communication (higher clocking frequency) additionally increases.
Previous systems have attempted to improve the communication speed of data between data storage and a host. One approach has been to have a wide data path that is used in a half duplex mode (i.e., one direction at a time). Throughput was enhanced by concentrating transfers into large uninterrupted buffers sent in bursts. These bursts are scheduled by such systems and communicate a burst of information during a burst period.
Quite often the buffer size for maximum data exchange between a data storage device and a host does not match the production/consumption rate for the type of data being transferred. This is particularly true for streams of audio/video data. However, maximum exchange rates must be used since the storage device may be simultaneously used for multiple streams with only one stream's buffer active at any one time.
Further, the speed at which drives can communicate data to a host has also increased. As such, previous drives are capable of delivering data at a rate which far exceeds the rate at which the host can utilize the data. The host must maintain large buffers of data in order to fully transmit and receive the bursts and then slowly extract data from the local buffer as needed. This requires the data to be stored in both the host and the drive, duplicating the data and wasting resources.
Further, as the burst sizes increase, the size of buffers in both the host and the drive must be increased in order to be able to transmit and receive the large bursts of data. This results in an increased complexity and cost of previous systems.